Many electronic learning appliances are commercially available. One problem with conventional learning appliances is that they have limited content. For example, an educational toy may include specific educational content that is pre-stored on a ROM (read only memory) chip within the toy. The chip contains only a limited amount of audio and/or visual data and the visual and audio outputs that the toy can produce are therefore limited. Children can easily become bored with the toy over a short period of time. This may also frustrate parents who may buy the toy only to see their children not use the toy.
In order to provide new content for an educational toy, a memory chip that is used in a toy could be re-programmed with new audio and visual data from an external source. For example, one conventional Web site allowed users to download new audio data for toys to change the content of the toys. Separate links were provided for each of the separate toys. When a link for a particular toy was selected, the audio data could be downloaded and then used in a person's toy.
Although the Web site was useful, a number of improvements could be made. First, a person had to search through the Web site trying to find the particular toys that the user owned each time the Web site was visited. The person had to look for the person's toy among other toys that the user did not have. This process was time consuming, inefficient, and frustrating. Second, the Web site did not provide the user with the ability to manage the content that was downloaded to his/her electronic toys. A family, for example, may have a number of electronic toys. There was no ability to manage the content that was downloaded by the user.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.